This doesn't affect you people directly so much as it will potentially affect me but I just want to put it out there that the news New York Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler has accepted a job at Citigroup as executive vice president of global public affairs has me supremely amped. And not just because he'll do right by Mr. Vikram, but also because of this:

Mr. Skyler, recruited by the city Parks Department from the University of Pennsylvania, was just 28 when the mayor made him his press secretary. In that job, he fiercely protected Mr. Bloomberg's image, flashing anger and unleashing expletives at reporters.

With a handful of exceptions (you know who you are and I cherish our time together), and some diamonds in the rough, there are basically four types of people you encounter in the world of flackdom: the idiot flack, the ass-kissing flack, the lying sack of shit flack, and various combinations thereof. None is likely to garner your respect. In Skyler you have the rare bird of a spokesman who, while I can't promise he won't lie to you, will at least entertain and exhilarate, via (fingers crossed) suggesting you go fuck yourself while addressing such matters as private Zen Gardens, hard to explain corporate actions (such as spending hundreds of millions on no longer extant hedge funds in order to acquire the greatest mind on Wall Street), and so and so forth. I, for one, cannot wait. I'm dead serious.

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Update: I forgot to add, the whiny, pitiable flack (lots of overlap with the idiot flack here).